22. Intent

22

Intent

Celyn

T he sorcerer on the island came to me on the night Safira let me carry her, not long after Safira had returned indoors to sleep. I was disinclined to respond, not caring much for anyone on the island save for the one whose dark eyes captivated me so, but she was determined.

"I know you know I'm here," she said, her voice the sort of placid calm that heralds the worst of storms. "I want to talk."

I didn't answer, observing her reflection in the water. Her face was still rounded with youth, her skin unlined. Like me, she bore no sign of the sun upon her body, her skin all the same smooth tone, without freckle or sun-kiss. Her reddish-brown hair lay over her shoulder in a loose braid, well-tended but unloved. Against the cold she wore heavy clothing, obscuring her body from sight, leaving only her face and fingers.

I watched as she selected several stones from my shore, hefting them before looking out across me with a flat stare. She skipped the first two, the flat stones fluttering across my waves before sinking towards my depths. She hurled the third, the stone smacking into me with a plunk! , sending water up in a cascade.

"Don't test me, motherfucker," she snapped. "I'd like a friendly relationship, given that I'm living on your shores, but I'm in no mood to be fussy about it. Come ashore, Celyn. Don't make me call you by another name."

The threat pierced me the way it was meant to. To speak the name of an elemental aloud is to command him, with no escape save for becoming unmade. Safira had told me the sorcerer knew I had never told a lie, which meant her ability to read the ley extended to the patterns of the soul. I'd never spoken my name to anyone, but for her to threaten to speak it meant that she could read it in me.

She'd spent a long time at my shore, that first time. How much of me had she seen?

I went ashore, dripping with water as my hooves hit the firm ground. I gave her as baleful a look as I could manage, snorting at her from where I stood half-in and half-out of my lake.

"Thank you," she said, returning to her calm tone of voice. "We need to talk about Safira."

My reaction to those words came without my command. My ears pinned back and head lowered as I turned to face her head on, muscles bunching. Waves grew whitecaps on my open expanse, crashing on the shore. If she dared to take Safira from me, she would find how terrible a water-horse's wrath could be.

The sorcerer put her hands on her hips, giving me a contemplative look, her brows pulled together and mouth bunching to one side. She looked out over the water, the breeze lashing through the loose hair around her face, then back into my eyes. "I'm not here to start a war," she said quietly, seemingly unperturbed by my ire. "Safira seems very happy with you, and if that's all this is, I'm content to leave things as they are. But you're a water-horse, and that makes you one of the elemental seducers. I need to know what your intentions are towards her."

As she spoke, my anger settled towards confusion. The waves smoothed and my ears relaxed, turning forward as I regarded her. It seemed laughable to call one such as me a seducer. The knowledge of the word settled into me as she spoke it, carrying with it images of men luring women, of sirens singing from the sea and the mystery-dark eyes of huldra as they stepped backwards into the woods. I had known nothing of seduction when Safira first laid her hand upon me.

I walked up onto shore, turning so I might see her better, then cocked my ear towards her.

A slight smile touched the woman's mouth before smoothing away. "I'm not talking about the sex, if that's what you're thinking," she said, sounding wry. "The gods only know what possessed her to decide you're safe enough to fuck, but you haven't hurt her, and that woman dances around like the most foolishly in love of us. But you're a water elemental. Your nature is profoundly possessive. So I need to know." She took a deep breath. "Are you going to give her the choice to be your consort? Because if you don't, one day you're never going to let her ashore, and I'm going to have to try to save her."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I could only stand there, stock-still, staring at the sorcerer.

Consort. I'd never heard the word before. Nobody had ever spoken it—had ever hinted at such a thing. The knowledge would have come in time, I thought, like the rain carving new shapes into the mountains, but from the sorcerer's voice came a torrent of understanding. The world tore open for me, baring the patterns I hadn't yet begun to recognize.

She could be mine forever. I could give her everything I was, sharing my waters and my power, and we would see the years in their thousands together. All I needed was her consent and my name to bind us together. The timeless perfection I felt with her would last for the rest of my existence, her laughter lighting my days and her warmth holding me close.

"She's under my protection," the sorcerer said, her voice falling quiet again. "I can't watch her be stolen, and know she's dying under your waves because you can't bear to be without her." The corners of her mouth trembled, a great sorrow coming to the fore. "Too many people have died because of my carelessness already. I won't let it happen to anyone else."

I slipped into my form as a man, meeting her eyes with mine. She had colorless eyes, stripped of the vitality that had once lived in them. She could see much, looking at me, but I was also a great power, and I saw the ragged edges of her strength, where she'd been torn by a foe far more implacable than I. She'd come to me for Safira's sake, willing to break the long-ago treaties I'd made with her kind for the sake of her gardener. That great kindness let me look at her without anger for her interference.

She was right about me. I could see the pattern now that she'd spoken it, look at the days and months I'd spent with Safira and observe my growing obsession. It had all happened so quickly , the blink of an eye to someone like me, but it had happened. I couldn't bear to imagine my life without Safira. I lived each day greedily, wanting more of her time, luring her deeper into my waters. I would hold her, keep her, carry her into my cold blue depths and hoard even her bones—

No.

"I will give her the choice," I said, my chest wrenching even as I spoke the words. If I gave her a choice, she might leave —

If I didn't give it to her, it would destroy everything I cherished about her. There would be no more laughter. No more sunlight. A corpse is cold comfort to someone who has come to long for companionship.

The sorcerer's face held only compassion and sorrow. She nodded, then crossed her arms over her chest and bowed to me. She stood again, her gray-eyed gaze showing me nothing. "Do it soon," she said, the words without emotion, everything locked deep within her. "Love can make even the kindest of us into monsters." Her eyes drifted out to my waters, then up to the soaring black needle of her tower.

When she turned back to me, I was gone. I couldn't bear another moment of her sorrow, or the knowledge of what sort of creature I was.

She'd called me a seducer, and I understood, now. It is greed that turns allure to seduction—the grasping need to possess . And what is water but a thing that keeps what it takes? The rain carries away the soil, and the lake swallows everything that falls upon it. Perhaps I was less greedy than some – I had freed the woman and the boy – but I'd given so much of myself to Safira already, and accepted much in return. To let out of my grasp something I greatly desired to keep felt like an impossible task. I could never do it—

I forced myself to imagine what it would be like if I did not. Bones beneath the waves; laughter turned to silence.

I could. And I would. She had always returned to me. Surely this would be no different.